News

A good friend of ours at Shutt Velo Rapide has recently given up a successful career in teaching to make the bold leap into the vintage bicycle business. Golden Age Cycles was launched online in January with their new retail shop opening very shortly in the centre of Banbury. Golden Age plans to cater for the growing interest in British cycling heritage, and will be specialising in racing cycles from the 1950s to the 1990s. This was the heyday of steel bicycle production and the machines were handmade by craftsmen proud to show their name, such as Hetchins, Mercian and...

Several members of Team Shutt Velo Rapide took part in the Banbury Star CC's reliability rides this weekend. The Banbury Star is one of the UK’s oldest cycling clubs and is celebrating its 125th anniversary this spring. So these reliability rides date back to the time when these early spring trials were genuinely a way to test the reliability of your equipment ahead of the coming season. Like lots of cycling clubs, the Banbury Star offers 3 groups depending on how fast you want to go, the aim being to complete the course within your allotted time. Most of the Shutt riders went...

4th Cat race, from SVR's Jos Busby... Saturday Morning, this was an awful day to be on a bike popping down to the local shops let alone racing in an exposed airfield. The first race of the season and it was met with some trepidation after an unfruitful 2015; my first year as a licensed racer. However although last season offered no points to speak of, the steep learning curve gave me an idea of the lay of the land, the "dos and don'ts" and how to at least try to avoid crashing or being the cause of an incident because...

The 2016 racing season is nearly upon us so it’s time to design and make the new team kits. Last year’s kit was really popular and my suggestion that we changed the colour met with a resounding no from the team. So I asked custom designer guru Roger to come up with some ideas – using black again for the ShuttVR riders and purple for Squadra Donne. Here are the designs... Perhaps naively, I expected some consensus from the riders when I posted Roger’s ideas on our team forum, but almost everyone had a different opinion. If there was a favourite,...

I’m having a bit of a moment. At 4.45am in a dark, chilly car park in Les Saisies, high in the French Alps, I’m getting ready to descend to Megeve with 500 odd other riders and I have a broken zip on my jacket. Any hopes at remaining “tranquilo” before I begin the world’s toughest one day bike race look to be scuppered as I struggle with the stubborn little piece of metal and unfairly growl at my girlfriend. A couple of deep breaths, some brute force applied to the zip and I recover my senses and make my way...